Company Overview

For decades, ASICS America Corporation has been synonymous with performance at the highest level. From trail running and track to tennis, volleyball and wrestling, ASICS is the go-to sports footwear brand for millions of consumers worldwide. Still, it wasn’t long ago that the company was still figuring out how to navigate the changing e-commerce landscape. After combining multiple websites into one seamless experience across a full range of performance shoes and lifestyle brands, the ASICS website is now a one-stop-shop for a personalized path to purchase. But the shopping journey doesn’t end there; it continues on Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping and other essential channels.

Even amid these impressive developments, the company hasn’t been immune to the unpredictability of an ever-evolving industry. With e-commerce in a constant state of change, ASICS has faced some significant challenges along the way.

The Situation

Like all big brands, ASICS has long understood the importance of building a strong e-commerce presence. As consumers continually seek new ways to interact with their favorite manufacturers, direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels are key. But in an industry where wholesale and resale played such a central role for so long, embracing new methods on marketplaces also meant coming up with new strategies.

“Organization was an issue,” says E-Commerce Marketplace Manager Rebekah Darsch. “We had a large product catalogue. One person managing that every day was unsustainable.”

There were other challenges, too. Especially when it came to consolidating multiple websites into one big-brand URL.

So the team decided to ramp up its efforts with ChannelAdvisor.

The Solution

For a while, ASICS had been using the ChannelAdvisor e-commerce platform to manage marketplaces such as eBay and Rakuten. But as the ASICS DTC business expanded, it became clear that more support would be needed to tackle two crucial areas of need: marketplace management and digital marketing.

“We met with the team at ChannelAdvisor, our account manager and other team members,” says Kyle Boucher, Senior Manager, Demand Generation. “We spent our time learning what ChannelAdvisor could offer us.”

It didn’t take long for ASICS to decide that leveraging the company’s marketplace and digital marketing specialists “just made sense.”

“The big piece for our search program was to improve the way we were messaging our customers… based on age, gender and keyword interest,” explains Boucher. “And there was only so much I had the ability to do when I did it on my own.”

Darsch echoed his sentiments on the marketplace side.

“Just being able to use ChannelAdvisor’s platform to help us with the Amazon integration to pull in orders and sales helped us grow quickly,” she says.

The Results

Thanks to ChannelAdvisor successfully launching them on Amazon, ASICS reports that its year-over-year revenue growth shot up 72%.

ASICS’ digital marketing campaigns were equally rewarding. After setting an original goal for return on ad spend (ROAS), the team watched the actual number climb to a new record.

“Once we partnered more with ChannelAdvisor and optimized our programs, we ended up with an impressive ROAS at the end of the year,” says Boucher. “In terms of revenue, we finished with 41% above where we were [a year ago].”

That’s not even the best part.

In the five-day span between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, ASICS watched year-over-year growth swell by 150%. According to ASICS, it was the company’s most successful Cyber 5 holiday selling season ever.

“We more than doubled our demand, which is incredible,” Darsch says. “And 81% of our marketplace revenue during Cyber 5 came from Amazon. We were so excited because that was a new marketplace ChannelAdvisor helped us to launch on.”

“Working with ChannelAdvisor,” adds Boucher, “We were able to do a lot of things during the holidays including features and promotions.”

“[Without ChannelAdvisor], our program would be much different,” Boucher says. “We would’ve had to find a lot of alternative methods to do what we do. We’re currently advertising across three different search engines. There would be no real way we could manage that. There wouldn’t be much of a program without ChannelAdvisor’s robust platform.”

Darsch agrees.

“I can’t even imagine what it would be like without ChannelAdvisor,” she says. “I would definitely recommend ChannelAdvisor to other sellers, especially those that are just starting out on marketplaces. ChannelAdvisor is not only a service to help with our feeds but also a resource on how to sell on marketplaces and how to grow.”